At the recent MIT Mobile Technology Summit, Corning, makers of the toughened Gorilla Glass that goes into building screens of most of today's premium handhelds (tablets and smartphones), unveiled a new glass with two unique features. The glass is highly anti-reflective, improving readability of screens in daylight conditions or outdoors, and it has anti-bacterial properties.

To begin with, Corning demonstrated a revolutionary new anti-reflection technology. See that picture above? Looks like a sheet of glass with a hole cut out in the middle, right? Wrong! It's a portion of the same uncut sheet that's treated with Corning's new anti-reflection tech. Imagine how much more readable screens could get under outdoor daylight.

The surfaces of smartphones and tablets, which come in contact with your fingertips and body oils (sebum), can form nourishing breeding grounds for several kinds of microbes. With the rise in popularity of touchscreen kiosks, it's anyone's guess how hygienic a glass surface can be. Corning demonstrated a new anti-bacterial treatment for glass that builds on its recent innovations in oleophobic (oil-repelling) surfaces. The tech is claimed to be so effective, that in comparison to untreated glass, it reduces surface microbial growth by over 10^6.

Corning expects to roll out glass with these two innovations in the coming two years.